Ilkeston Town Walk - Stage 28 - Crossing
Cotmanhay Road
w/e 28 November 2004
All this week's
pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490
I don't suppose there is anything remarkable
about the "Live and Let Live" except to note that,
despite the number of public houses in Ilkeston, by following
a circuitous route via the Rutland Recreation Ground, Victoria
Park and the Manners Link, this is the first one we have passed
since leaving the Market Place. Between the pub at the bottom
of Charlotte Street and Cotmanhay Road lies Granby Park.
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The park is made up of a large
expanse of open grassland, a playground with swings and slides
for children and this piece of modern art near the main entrance
at the junction of the aforementioned roads. The park's appearance
today belies the fact that it occupies the site of the former
Granby Colliery but the site was acquired way back in 1896 for
a recreation ground.
One of the segments of the sculpture is inscribed "Changing
Places - 2000 AD, Breaking The Mould 1 of 21, Artist - Andrew
McKeown". Inscriptions on the other pieces are just as enlightening
and possibly more so, but whatever your take on modern art, it
is regrettable that graffiti vandals - I refuse to call them
artists - have found it necessary to daub their messages here.
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Our ultimate direction as we leave the
park is to the left but at the bottom of Charlotte Street we
must first turn right and walk along Cotmanhay Road almost as
far as the buildings seen towards the centre of this picture.
Between those buildings and the vehicle heading towards us, there
used to be a railway bridge over the road.
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It is here that we once again pick up the
route of the old Great Northern Railway having already trod the
path known as the Manners Link between Manners Avenue and Heanor
Road. This part of the route is now called the Cotmanhay Linear
Park and as the plaque tells us at the access, it has been partly
funded using landfill tax credits by the Waste Recycling Group
Ltd.
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The route has been landscaped and has created a pleasant and
quieter alternative way to reach Nelson Street instead of walking
along the busy Cotmanhay Road.
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Several roads cross the Linear Park, the first being Ebenezer
Street but we shall continue to the next intersection at Duke
Street before turning right to reach Awsworth Road. The small
inset here shows the view down Ebenezer Street to Awsworth Road.
The walkway now ceases at the Nelson Street housing development
but originally the railway continued on its way to Nottingham
over the Bennerley Viaduct which we first saw from the grounds
of the Erewash Museum in Stage
02 of the Town Walk.
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